Gingrich Nazi comparisons rebuked

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich received a scolding this week from media personalities and politicos alike for comparing Democrats to Nazis, socialist and terrorists in a flurry of public appearances designed to promote his new book.

In the months leading up to the release of his new book, “To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular Socialist Machine,” Gingrich has used almost every opportunity available to brand President Barack Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as “secular socialists,” as if trying to coin the phrase.

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But in his book, Gingrich went even farther than calling Democratic leaders socialist – a phrase used so often during the health care debate that it has almost lost its shock value – writing that they represent a threat just as dangerous as Nazi Germany.

The assertion struck Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace as “wildly over the top,” which he told Gingrich when he asked the Georgia Republican to defend the statement on Sunday.

“You also write this, and let’s put it up on the screen. ‘The secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did,’” Wallace said. “Mr. Speaker, respectfully, isn’t that wildly over the top?”

“No, not if by America you mean the historic contract we’ve had which says your rights come from your creator, they’re unalienable, you’re allowed to pursue happiness,” Gingrich responded. “I mean, just listen to President Obama’s language.”

In an e-mail to POLITICO, Gingrich claimed he has “not compared Obama, Pelosi and Reid to Nazi Germany or to Soviet Russia” and that he is “a little surprised at how much people are distorting what I wrote.”

“I have asserted that the secular socialist machine is a mortal threat to the future of America as we have known it just as totalitarian regimes were mortal threats to the survival of America in the past,” he wrote. “In our generation the two mortal threats are radical Islam and secular socialism.”

Regardless of the former speaker’s explanation, former Rep. Susan Molinari (R-N.Y.) found the remark “just crazy.”

“This is Newt,” said Molinari who served under Gingrich in the House, said during an interview on CNN. “He can be really smart sometimes and sometimes he can just say some absolutely outrageous things. I would be like to be in that corner of saying that is outrageous.”

Former Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.) brushed back Gingrich on Thursday during the show he hosts on MSNBC, “Morning Joe.”